Leadership Skills

What separates a struggling startup from a thriving empire? It’s not luck—it’s leadership skills. Join Parker McCumber, 14-year military vet and eight-figure entrepreneur, as he shares the 5 game-changing skills—communication, flexibility, leadership, problem-solving, and risk management—that took him from a broke college kid to coaching leaders worldwide. Packed with real stories from the Utah National Guard and actionable tips for small business owners and startup founders, this is your no-BS guide to leading like a pro. 

Want the full playbook? Grab Parker’s book at ParkerMcCumber.com/book.  

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Transcript

 Here's the deal. Leadership isn't a gift that you're just born with. It's something that you have to develop through the development of skills. Welcome back to base business today. We're talking about Leadership skills. I'm going to share the five skills that I think are most critical for leaders to develop Based on the research that I've done in my degree programs, as well as coaching entrepreneurs and business leaders now, keep in mind, these are the exact same things that I used to go from a nobody from nowhere broke kid to running multi million dollar businesses and coaching entrepreneurs worldwide.

These are the skills that I use in the military and in business.  What if I told you one slip of the tongue  could tank your team in a matter of seconds  in the military? If you can't get your point across clearly, quickly, and with your intent accurately described,  you're done.  I remember leading a team recently, actually,  where I tried very hard to share my vision and intent with my subordinate leaders, but it didn't make it down to the lower levels.

And so the communication was ineffective. It broke down  because that communication broke down.  And my vision and intent wasn't shared with the entire organization. People didn't understand why we were doing things.  In the military, like in many of your businesses, I'm sure, we have jargon that's exclusive to us.

If you can't get your point across directly with the people that you're working to though, clearly, quickly, and with your intent, you're not going to be successful, right? At the end of the day, we have a saying, plain English works.  Just be willing to talk to somebody. The same principles can be applicable to business, right?

And leadership. If you're having a hard time conveying your point, you're having a hard time understanding the person that you're working with, the person that you need to be communicating with.  Get rid of the jargon. Get rid of the fancy, uh, terminologies. Sit down and try to just have a very direct, one on one conversation if necessary.

Using the simplest terms as possible to come to the easiest agreements  and understanding. So whether you're talking to your team or you're talking to your customers or your investors, keep it open.  Two way communication is always going to be superior to one way communication. It builds trust and it builds accountability and transparency. 

Ask questions of your team when you need their feedback to make decisions, but also listen to that feedback, right?  And don't just talk once. Stay in constant communication. Stay in constant contact.  When I started Oro Tactical while I was in college, I'd check with my team daily.  They felt valued. They felt like they were important in the decision making process. 

And ultimately, that's why we were able to be successful with our non negotiables and our goals for growing that organization.  Have you ever had a perfect plan and then wondered why it blew up in your face  and then wondered what to do about it? Skill number two is flexibility and adaptability.  The terms get interchanged a lot, which is why I'm sharing them both with you. 

The military drills this into us constantly, right? Adapt and overcome. I'll never forget a training exercise where our plan went sideways. Everything that could have been wrong was wrong. The weather tanked, the gear failed,  communication broke down, total chaos. Instead of freaking out the way that I,  uh, ran with my squad, uh, we just decided, look,  we've got what we've got or routed.

We have to essentially figure this out and improvise, right? So we were able to essentially adjust our plan on the fly. And that allowed us to still hit our objective and then uphold our mission and the mission intent as best as we possibly could on the ground at the time. And that's the mindset that you have to have going into  Leadership in business, right?

It's no different when I launched my companies, we had supply chain issues that we needed to work out and we don't necessarily get to control every aspect of that, right? One example that's been kind of consistent over the last few years is. Tariffs coming in and, uh, strikes from workers at the docks, shipyards,  right?

Um, customs and border patrol. There's all kinds of these steps that people don't necessarily think about when they think about the supply chain, but all of those things are outside of our control, right?  Uh, so all we can do is, is kind of roll with those punches. And make adjustments to our plan and our models on the fly to be as  effective and responsive as we can. 

Focus on what you can control,  trust your team to handle their pieces, and then treat uncertainty like it's a chance for you to innovate or solve a problem.  Rigid leaders break, but flexible leaders survive and thrive. Being the boss is the dumbest way to lead your team.  Skill number three is leadership itself. 

What? The video's called Leadership Skills. Now you're just gonna tell us about leadership?  The art of leadership here, as a skill, is that it's not just barking orders, but it's inspiring action. It's about sharing your influence. In the National Guard, I've led teams, well, an army in the National Guard now, teams from three dudes on a, on a fire support team to a hundred people in a field artillery battery. 

Early on, I took over units that were a mess, low morale, no direction, uh, essentially were mistreated by the, the higher units. And so they felt bad, they performed bad. I mean, that's just the reality of the situation.  When I enter those units, I ask the soldiers what's working, what's not working. And not just with the team, but the people around the teams, right?

We try to get as much perspective as we can.  Then I get into the trenches with them essentially. Uh, and you show that you care you're with them performing the work and the actions you're investing your time, your energy, your effort into learning best practices, and then developing them further. Right.

And within just a couple of weeks.  Um, this team starts executing like an absolute machine, and it's because one, we're taking the time to know our people to we're taking the time to know our processes. Three in doing those things and serving alongside of our people were able to best show and that we care one and inspire action, right? 

Inspire them to take ownership of their roles and their processes.  So, uh, we have a saying in the military lead from the front,  I believe for the  military and in business, it's better to say lead from where you're most effective.  For example, if you're leading an army,  being on the front line, right in the trench with those soldiers may not be the most effective place for you because you can't see the battlefield in the bigger picture and what's actually going on, right  in business.

Similarly, While you're running a small business, smaller teams, it's a lot easier to get involved with their day to day and be active in communication and  work with them. However, larger organizations, when you're running, managing bigger teams, bigger groups of people, it's harder to get down into those trenches.

Because you need to be able to see as a leader the picture of what's going on around you  so that you can make adjustments and you can guide the organization. Pro tip, spend a few minutes today asking your team what motivates them. You'll be shocked at how far that conversation alone can take you in developing that relationship.

And developing an inspirational leadership method.  What's one question that could fix your biggest headaches in business in just a matter of minutes?  Skill number four is problem solving.  Military life is a crash course in this. Every mission has a snag, every training objective has an obstacle. Uh, we've had vehicles break down mid operation.

That are in the middle of nowhere. We've had vehicles get stuck in the Registan desert in Afghanistan. There's no tow truck coming to bail you out of that one, right? So we rally the troops and we literally dig ourselves out of these situations.  We have to assess when things are wrong, right? We ask, why is it wrong?

What's the fix? Who's got ideas for how to fix this?  And ultimately you just have to solve the problem and then roll out  in business. It's the same principles, right? We've hit shipping bottlenecks and I've asked why 15 times to not get responses or to track it down to a lazy vendor. And sometimes you're going to have to  get to the root of these problems and then make a change.

Stay positive.  Simplify the issue. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need to ask for help. The next time that you get stuck, write down your problem and ask why until you hit the root.  Then hit it hard.  This is a skill and a practice that I like to use. I use it in the military. I use it in business. 

When you identify a problem, ask why it's a problem and then keep asking why. Every subordinate step until you get to the actual route and then you can solve the route.  Think about gambling on your business  is gambling on your business bold.  What if there's a smarter way to win  skill number five, the last skill we're going to talk about in this video is risk management.

And I've often said that learning this in the military was my biggest contributor to success in business and in growing my brand and my companies. The military has a five step process for risk management. It starts with identifying hazards, assessing them, controlling them, implementing your controls, and then refining,  supervise and refine.

I use this process in everything that I do. I hope the military doesn't get mad at me for stealing their process. But I use it in leading businesses. I use it in decision making. I use it in military problem solving. I use it in military leadership, right? And I teach this. I've talked about it on podcasts.

I've talked about it in my own articles that I write and in my other videos. Um, but ultimately implementing risk management. As a control as a system  is about playing smart, not safe.  If you're not willing to take risk, you're never going to gain a reward.  A lot of entrepreneurs fail because they see the risk and they get discouraged and they don't take the actions. 

If you use a process like this, this risk management process,  you're assessing your hazards and then you're developing controls to protect or mitigate the risk that those hazards pose.  And you're able to take action with mitigated risks so that even if you do have. A bad situation. It's not going to derail you.

It's not going to derail your company. It's maybe going to cause you some, some short term heartburn,  but if you are appropriately managing risk, then you're still taking the action needed to drive your organization forward and win  and you're protecting yourself. For entrepreneurs, this is really about playing it smart, not safe.

When I jumped into real estate, for example, I didn't just say YOLO. I assessed the markets. I mitigated losses with solid tenants, right?  Make sure that we stay proactive in our research. Clarify who's handling what,  set realistic goals, spot your risks early and often.  My advice to you would be before your next big move, list the risks and how you plan to tackle them.

That way you can grow without experiencing a crash. I forgot to say at the start of this video, I'm donating 1 to charity water for every subscriber I get on YouTube in 2025. So, if you like leadership development, entrepreneurship, and team development, or like and subscribe to my channel, I'll donate 1 to charity water for every subscriber I get on YouTube in 2025.

If you're looking for more, check out my book, How the Hell Are You Doing This? By Captain Parker McCumber, the story of life and leadership from my perspective. In this book, I share the actual principles that I use on a daily basis to operate my businesses and grow.  If you have any questions about anything we covered, drop a comment below and tell me what skills you're working on leveling up.